It's a.....

We found out the gender of our baby the other day! It’s a…

BOY!!!

We have pretty much settled on a name and have been calling him by his new name all weekend. I’ve also started feeling him move around and he’s been using my bladder as a trampoline. It’s awesome, yet totally weird, feeling him move inside of me. It’s surreal really. It feels like popcorn popping inside my belly. He’s pretty active throughout the day. (He’s actually moving right now – maybe he can sense me talking about him?!) The movements aren’t strong enough to wake me up at night though. We were bowling on Saturday night (one of Seth’s favorite activities) and the baby was moving around. Seth was excited that the baby seemed to like the noise of the bowling alley. 

Which leads me to....

Sunday morning I woke up with a bladder infection. Ever had one of those?? They SUCK soooo bad. I really didn’t want to go to the ER…last time I went, it was a 6 hour wait. It was terrible and people in the waiting room were annoying. Sunday evening, it was getting worse each time I went pee and it became pretty painful. And I had to go every 5 seconds, but literally it would be a teaspoon of pee. I called the ER room and asked if there were a ton of people and about how long a wait would be (apparently, I thought it was like calling ahead for a reservation at a restaurant) and was disappointed that she couldn’t give me an answer and all she could say was “it’s been steady.” I figured a bladder infection would be low on the list of priority things in an ER room. Eventually, I sucked it up and went to the ER, where I was pleasantly surprised when I checked in that I would need to go to the Labor and Delivery ER room because I’m 20 weeks pregnant and if there’s any pain in the ab or girly part areas, I have to go to that ER room. After getting lost in a creepy, quiet, dimly lit hospital on a Sunday evening, I found a janitor who pointed me in the right direction to where I was supposed to go. There wasn’t a wait whatsoever and I was in a room immediately! Hallelujah! I was feeling the baby move so I really wasn’t concerned that he was in danger, but I was in pain and that’s the only reason I went, instead of waiting to go to my regular DR on Monday morning. I got some meds, got lost in the hospital again on my way out and then was home at about 8:45 pm. I was only there for about 3 hours and I’m so thankful that it wasn’t all night long like the last time. Seth was home though, so I was bored as hell in the hospital by myself. We were in the middle of making a bunch of cookies for some of his friends that are deployed and I was making mac and cheese for dinner, using a recipe I was sooo excited for! He said he would finish the baking and cook dinner while I went to the ER.

i parked here. because i could! and because i knew it'd be dark and late by the time i left 

I saw this recipe on pinterest on Saturday morning and we decided to make them on Sunday. They didn’t turn out nearly as pretty as they are in the pinterest pic but they are very good. Very rich too. Ours turned out ugly. 

proof ours were ugly!

We put a little dab of brownie mix on the bottom of the cupcake pan, but clearly the original picture indicates just put the Oreo on the bottom. We also overfilled them so they overflowed from the cupcake pan and were really difficult to get out. Oh well, they tasted good and Seth’s coworkers are enjoying them for a while.  

Saving Money

I attempted to cut Seth’s hair last night. You know, just give it a little trim so he didn’t have to pay $15 to get a haircut. He figured we could save $30/month if I learn to cut his hair. Apparently once upon a time, I made a comment about how it can’t be that hard to cut his hair and he asked if I wanted to go to the PX to get some clippers with him. We stood in the aisle and debated over different clippers and then settled on a set.

Do you KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO DO A FADE TO ARMY STANDARDS?! It’s stupid hard. Seth started this venture out with hair. Now he’s bald. Honestly. That’s how hard it is. I’m not even kidding. He was getting annoyed with me (because helllllo, I’ve never actually GIVEN a haircut according to Army regulations, but it looked easy enough when I’d go to the barber shop with him), and I was getting annoyed with him because he was getting annoyed with me. Then he gave me the Army regulation number that is for the haircut. I practiced fades on his hair for what seemed like eternity (in one evening, mind you) so I can eventually learn it. After practicing (and messing up) fade after fade after fade, he told me to just shave it all off.

But lucky for me, he said we can give it another try this weekend! YAY!!!! Please note my sarcasm. And lucky for him, the evening ended in me in tears because I failed him and his hair cutting needs when he started citing the Army regulations for haircuts. All in an attempt to save a little money.

For the record, he looks much better with hair. This hair. The hair that was all over the bathroom floor. And now in the trash can. Mixed with tears and pride. I'm not a barber. Nor a hair stylist.

News train - a first class ticket!

We got approved for the house AND they accepted our offer!!! We close in a few weeks. I never thought I’d be so excited to move, but I am!! I just want to be moved in and settled and have separate, designated rooms for an office, a guest room and a backyard for Patrick!!



Also, while I’m on the news train and it’s Valentine’s Day, I should also mention that I’m pregnant :) We’ve known for quite some time (ok, a long time…early November!), we only told family our exciting news. I was too scared/nervous I’d jinx it if we told everyone right away. I’m now 19 weeks (as of today!!!) and in a safer zone and we feel more comfortable telling people. I really want to start blogging more regularly so I can document it as the time goes on.


So far, it’s been a fairly easy pregnancy. The first trimester, I constantly felt like I was going to throw up, but I only threw up a handful of times (thankfully). I have higher levels of iron than the average woman, so I haven’t been nearly as exhausted as all my pregnant friends said I would be. We are going to centering classes at the hospital and they’re fun! Tomorrow is our second class and I’m excited for it. It’s a monthly 2 hour class and the spouses take our vitals (blood pressure and weight – that’s always fun….not) and then we get to hear the heartbeat. The class is with other people who are due right around the same time (we’re all due in July) and we have a reunion class after we all have the babies and the babies get to meet each other!! We also talk about regular topics and as we get closer to our due dates, we take a tour of the labor and delivery rooms, apparently get on the table and practice labor positions (I already told Seth I’m SO volunteering to do that!! I may or may not be joking).


When I first found out I was pregnant, I immediately thought it was a boy. I don’t know why, but I just did. Everyone on Seth’s side of the family (except one of his sisters) thinks it’s a boy. Everyone on my side of the family thinks it’s a girl. At the suggestion of a friend, I held my wedding ring (and engagement ring and promise ring all at separate times) over my palm with a strand of my hair to see what it reveals. Going in a line suggests it’s going to be a boy, going in loops suggests a girl. Each time I try this, it consistently goes in a line. The Chinese calendar (based on my age when I conceived the baby, and the month that we conceived) suggests it’s a girl. We have names picked out for each gender that we’re pretty firm on, but we’re not going to share them until the baby is here. (Enjoy the suspense!!) We will be finding out the gender though, and we can’t wait for that. We go in 10.5 days for that appointment!!! We went to Lowes (right after our offer on the house was accepted) and picked out paint swatches for a boy and girl’s room (no, I’m not having twins…we just have the colors picked out for whatever gender it is), our bedroom, an accent wall in the entry way, the living room and possibly the office.


It’s going to be a very exciting year and we can’t wait!!

(also, if we are friends on Facebook, I haven’t ‘announced’ it on there yet, so if you could not mention it, I would appreciate it. K thanks!!!)

Happy Valentine's Day :)

House Hunters

We’ve recently decided to start searching for a house to buy in the area. Lots of things are impacting this idea of ours and we’ve been looking online at all sorts of houses in our price range. We applied to see what we could pre-approved for earlier this week and we’re still waiting to hear back. Last night, we drove by a house we saw online and realized the neighborhood was ghetto, run-down, dirty and just gross. There was trash on people’s lawns, lawns weren’t taken care of, the houses just looked dirty and old and we decided hell no.

We were close by another really nice house we had seen online and really liked but saw that there was a back up offer on it, but we decided to drive by anyways. It was in a gated community and we couldn’t remember the address, but we decided to drive around anyways and see if we could find it. Sure enough, we did find the community it was in! And the gate was open! We walked into the office right around 5 pm and it looked like the lady was closing up. Another guy who worked in the development was walking in at the same time and said we could come on in and we started looking at the community map and the plots of land. Seth pointed out the biggest lot and said it’d be an awesome one. We started talking to the lady and she said that they did have a few available houses that we had been looking at that we could tour. And one of them was even on the lot that Seth liked on the map! We hopped in our cars and followed her up the street to the house. It’s safe to say we fell in love with it pretty quickly (it’s a 4 bedroom + a den/home office, 2.5 bathroom, 2 car garage, large back yard, master bath with a walk in closet). It was pretty much everything we were looking for. We have an exceptionally large kitchen right now, with an island, that we love. The kitchen in the new house is a bit smaller, I think, but it might just be the layout. There isn’t an island, but I think we could easily make it work. We also currently have a pantry, and there’s a pantry (albeit not as big) in the new house.  We back to the office and the lady asked if we wanted to make an offer/write up a contract. We made an offer on it (which includes all of the closing costs include, a new refrigerator, a landscaped backyard (right now it’s just dirt) and a wooden fence to finish off the backyard.  I got an email last night at 10:30 from the lady (I’m not sure if she’s considered a realtor, she just works for the property development) that said our offer had been accepted!! We applied for the loan online to see if we could get pre-approved for the amount that we need. Even though she asked us if we wanted to write up a contract, to take it off the market to other lookers, I didn’t want to do that if we can’t get approved for the amount needed. I really don’t think we’ll have a problem, but I don’t want to tease myself. Ok, honestly I’m already in love with the house and it’s already a tease and I’m going to be very very sad if we don't get approved.

Right now, we’re anxiously awaiting a call back from the lender. We have an appointment tomorrow to go back and look at the house in the daylight and write up a contract, assuming we get approved. The lady also put early March as our possible closing date, assuming we get approved. The backyard would be perfect for Patrick too!! There is a little hill in it that he would love to tear up and down and roam free. There is a big flat spot by the back door that would allow for a hot tub too! It’s a house we can definitely grow into and we really want it.

Here’s to hoping it’s ours soon!

Oh, and P.S. Patrick was with us last night when we went on this adventure. The lady invited him into the office after we toured the house and she fell in love with him  (he’s a charmer, what can I say?!) When she emailed me, she addressed it to Seth, Stacy and Raymond!!! She called PATRICK Raymond!!! So today I’ve been calling him Raymond and he doesn’t seem to mind.

Here’s a picture of RAYMOND!!!! He also goes by Ray, for short. 

Oh hi, remember me?

I haven't blogged since November. Whooops! But rest assured I've been reading your blogs :)


Married life =  busy life basically. That's my (lame) excuse for not blogging. It seems we live at Lowes these days. To be clear, we're not home owners, but Seth is all into wood working now and has been buying stuff up the wazoo to support his new hobby. 


We went home to Michigan for a week and a half to spend Christmas. We stayed at Seth's parent's house. Ironically, my sister was in Michigan for Christmas too. (This is what my parents get for moving to CA earlier this year. We were going back to MI all along, and, well they up and moved across the country, and our plans stayed the same. Their fault!) This was the first Christmas I didn't spend with my parents. It was different, but a good different. We had a lot of fun in Michigan and I got to see most of my old friends and coworkers. I surprised one of my all time favorite co-workers at work when I showed up to her retirement celebration. She turned around, and saw me and gave me a big hug and her eyes got a little teary eyed and she said, "You came out here all the way for this?!?!" It was really sweet and I got teary eyed too. Working from home, I really miss my coworkers. I've adjusted to working from home and it's not nearly as bad as it was at the beginning of the school year. But I do miss the people interaction. Seth comes home sometimes for lunch, and I always have Patrick to keep me busy. Oh boy does that little dog keep me busy.


It's been a pretty decent start to the new year and we're looking forward to 2012! We have a lot of things planned and it's sure to be a good year. :)


I think I might have a give away coming up, too. My first one, and a company contacted me but I'm still thinking about it. 


And on that note, Seth just said to me, "do you want to go to Lowes?" So off to the store we go. We have a fun evening planned of homemade pizza and then baking a checkerboard cake for our friends' daughter's 1st birthday tomorrow. 


I'll be back soon! I promise. 
(my fingers may or may not have been crossed).

Germany - Homecoming Part 3 (finally!!!)

Remember that time I started writing about homecoming and my trip to Germany...back in April? Remember how I never finished those? Whoops, life got a tad busy. Anyways, I have had this written for a long time, just never finished it, and here it finally is. Part 1. Part 2.

The guys were expected home late late on April 6th, or very early morning on the 7th. Amy had been told at an FRG meeting that the activity center would be set up with the banners and podium once we got the 5 hour call that they were on their way home. (When I woke up on the morning of the 6th, Amy told me that she had gotten a call that trail party was arriving at 10:30 am and our guys would be after that). We took Sarah to her play group at 9 AM, which was in the activity center, and found that it already decorated with banners, signs, and the podium. We looked at each other in shock that it was already set up and wondered where our phone call was. We worried that they had called the house phone, not her cell phone like she instructed, but we continued on with play group instead. We killed time that afternoon by hanging out with the wives of the trail party, waiting with them for a little bit, going to lunch on post, me buying some beer for Seth to put in his room, putting the sign on his door that Sarah and I made and very anxiously awaiting our phone call. We would be in our own little world, dreaming of the next few hours, and one of us would just suddenly say a number, or hold up fingers, indicating a countdown of hours until they were expected home.  We talked about if we didn't get a phone call by a certain time, would we give up hope it was happening that night? When should we go to bed? Or should we pull an all nighter? Should Sarah go down for a nap, or should we keep her up and then put her to bed really early, only to wake her up a few hours into her sleep? Our heads were completely spinning with possibilities as we debated this very serious stuff! My heart would literally skip a beat when the phone would ring. We would turn our heads so fast to look at each other, and our mouths would drop and we'd say OMG! THIS IS IT!  Of course, it wasn't THE phone call, but we'd still get super excited.

Finally, after an agonzing day of waiting and thinking, at 7:30 pm on April 6th, we got our 5 hour warning phone call. We were told they landed in Germany and were going through customs. We were told we'd get another call back when they cleared customs and they were on their way to post. This is what I wrote in my vacation journal about getting that phone call: "All afternoon, every noise sounded like the phone ringing. It finally did for real at 7:30 pm and both of us jumped and she ran to get it. I called Sarah and she had a huge smile on her face. When Amy got off the phone, we both screamed and we got Sarah to scream in excitement and I felt like I was going to puke (from excited nerves) and she got a bloody nose (from excited nerves)."  She put Sarah down for bed, so she would have a little bit of a nap before being woken up in the middle of the night to go get her daddy. We tried to stay calm until we received the second phone call, which came at 8:45 pm. They had cleared customs and were really on their way home!! We were told if we got to the activity center at 11:30 pm, we would be there in plenty of time before the guys. We had planned earlier in the day to trade cameras, so pictures of me and Seth would be on my camera, and pictures of her and her husband would be on her camera. (We did have a girl who offered to take pictures for us; her husband was in the field training for a few weeks so she was free. But since it was midnight that that guys were expected home, we didn't ask her to do it after all). We spent the night getting ready and finally left her house at about 11 PM to head to the activity center. (We headed towards the main gate to exit, only to find that it closes at 10, so we had to back track, go further out of the way to exit the other gate to walk to the post that the activity center is on). She got Sarah up just a few minutes before we had to walk out the door, dressed her real quick and we headed out the door. We were practically running to the activity center, because we couldn't get there soon enough. It was pitch black out, a few street lights, a cool night, a car here and there, and us. Amy stopped to get a daffodil, and put it in her hair and kept one for Sarah. As we were getting to the primeters of post, I heard a diesel engine and looked back and said OMG MAYBE THAT'S THEM!!! Then we speculated, and walked/ran faster then determined it wasn't them. As we got closer to the entrance gate, we heard soldiers being loud and said maybe it was them, they had gotten there early, and they were waiting until 11:30 when familes were expected to be there. Amy said she wasn't looking, because she didn't want to ruin the surprise if it was them.

We got to the activity center at about 11:30 and Toby Keith's American Soldier was playing on the sound system. There were red, white and blue balloons everywhere, kids were running around with pure excitement, throwing balloons, chasing each other, jumping up and down. Soldiers were getting the podium in place, there was a slideshow playing on the wall with pictures from Afghanistan and the level of excitement in the room was awesome. Toby Keith's American Soldier song gets me every single time, and now when I hear it, I have the memory of walking into the activity center, getting ready to welcome home my love from his deployment. My heart swelled with an enormous amount of pride and excitement when I walked into the room. Considering it was midnight...and getting later into the middle of the night as the waiting continued, the kids did extremely well. There were no major breakdowns, the kids all played well, and were extremely excited knowing that their mom or dad would be home SOON. The garrison commander walked around and introduced himself and asked who we were and who we were waiting for. He was pretty nice, but I was nervous as hell to talk to him! Finally, around 1:30 AM, the white buses drove by and we could see them through the open doors. Amy and I sat down on the bleachers, switched cameras and tried to remain calm. The fog machine started generating the fog, the lights were dimmed, the music stopped and everyone got quiet and sat down. Suddenly the guys broke through the big red banner that said, "welcome back, Bravo!!" and everyone started screaming and snapping pictures and looking for their loved one. I scanned every face as they walked in and into formation and didn't see Seth. I saw Lee (Amy's husband) and Bubba and recognized a few others, but couldn't find Seth whatsoever. Amy is lucky that Lee is over 6 feet, so he stood over everyone and I got some good pictures of him. My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking and I couldn't find Seth. Plus, the fog machine was fogging everything up, so that was blurring the faces. All of them were in, but I still hadn't seen Seth and was getting terrified that he didn't make the flight for some reason. I started re-scanning the faces. I finally found him, in the last row, about 5th from the last! There were a few very short (thankfully!) speeches, and then the soldiers were released and Lee came right over to Amy and I waited to get a few pictures of them before I went and found Seth. Then Amy was right behind me and she got a few pictures of Seth and me. Within minutes, we walked out of the activity center, holding hands, reunited, finally. We walked with Lee, Amy and Sarah and then the guys got their bags from outside, and Amy and I congratulated each other that we finally made it, hugged each other, then went off with our guys. They went home and I snuck into the barracks with Seth for the next few nights.

The next few days consisted of soccer games, in-processing, hanging out with Amy and Sarah, and eating German food. I finally had a chance to meet the soldiers that Seth had talked about so many times too. Seth got a really dirty room and the shower was full of mold. So while Seth was doing his in-processing stuff, I cleaned the hell out of his shower. We had a picnic/bbq with Lee and Amy on a gorgeous, warm, sunny German afternoon. Seth also taught Sarah how to fist bump and it was the cutest thing ever!! Seth accompanied me to the Frankfurt airport (the train was packed for some reason, and I'm pretty sure we walked the whole length of the train cars to try to find a seat...and found nothing. We finally sat down in an area where the doors open and close, because it was a long ride. We hung out at the train station for a little while and then stayed the night at the Sheraton. (That place is really expensive in Euros!)

Ok, if you made it through that long of a post, here are some pictures!!! 

<3

welcome home!!!

waiting to be released!!

armed with tilex to take care of the mold in the shower. i used a clean sock as a face mask and one of those stretchy things to hold their uniform pants up on their boots to tie it to my face. a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do...

german soda

soccer game. or football as they call it. 

walk back to post from lee and amy's

so this banana here? when seth got his stuff delivered from storage,  he got his favorite black backpack and it had mold all over it. he couldn't figure out why and was getting pissed that they ruined it....and then he found a banana sitting in the front pocket. it was so old and gross and hairy and nasty, it didn't even smell bad (thankfully). but he hosed it off the in the shower and it's good as new, as he would say. it's sitting on our living room floor right now. i would have thrown it away if that happened to me.

frankfurt train station

Cutest pumpkin carving idea EVER!

A friend from home just sent me a link on how to carve pumpkins with a drill!! 

How adorable are these?! These are SO much more my style than the typical Jack-O-Lantern. 

Now, I must convince Seth to let me use his drill to do this. I imagine he won't be too thrilled with the idea. We went to the pumpkin patch on Saturday and got 66 lbs worth of pumpkin to carve. I don't really even enjoy carving pumpkins, but I do love roasting the pumpkin seeds. But a pretty little pumpkin that looks like this?! I think I could definitely enjoy it.

P.S. We are definitely Washing-ganders (that's the Michigander version of Washington residents. I don't know how to say it yet). We went to the pumpkin patch on a rainy day and went through a corn maze in the mud! (Thankfully it stopped raining as we started the maze, but the ground was still soaked and caked in mud). See?

I'll post pics once I have Seth convinced it's a good use of the drill. :)